The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that a Minnesota law criminalizing false statements made within 60 days of an election violates the First Amendment, a decision that clears the way for an anti-felon voting advocacy group to continue its messaging ahead of the midterms. The court reversed a federal district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Minnesota Voters Alliance, which had argued that the state’s election disinformation statute chilled its speech and exposed its members to criminal prosecution. The statute, which bars any person within 60 days of an election from making false statements that “intends to impede or prevent another person from exercising the right to vote,” was found to regulate speech protected by the U.S. Constitution and to fail the demanding standard of strict scrutiny. In ordering the district court to issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law against the Minnesota Voters Alliance and its members, the panel emphasized that the state had not shown the kind of narrow tailoring required for content-based restrictions on political speech. The ruling is a significant victory for conservative and election-integrity advocacy groups, but it also raises broader questions about the constitutionality of state laws designed to combat election misinformation, especially as courts increasingly scrutinize attempts to police false political speech.
Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge David R. Stras drew a sharp distinction between laws that punish fraudulent conduct and laws that punish speech alone. “Curbing unprotected speech, like fraud, is one situation,” Stras wrote. “But Minnesota’s statute does not work like a fraud statute because, like the one in” the U.S. Supreme Court’s military stolen valor case, “it targets mere knowing misstatements,” with “no requirement that someone listening acts upon it to their detriment.” This observation is central to the court’s reasoning. The Supreme Court in United States v. Alvarez struck down the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime to falsely claim receipt of military decorations, explaining that false statements alone, without a showing of actual harm or fraud, do not lose First Amendment protection. By analogizing the Minnesota law to that statute, the Eighth Circuit signaled that a state cannot criminalize a lie simply because it is a lie, particularly when the lie is uttered in the context of an election and no victim has suffered a concrete injury. The court also noted that the law’s intent requirement—that false statements be made with the intent to impede or prevent voting—was not enough to save it. Mere knowledge of falsity, without more, is insufficient to justify a content-based restriction on speech, and the statute’s failure to require reliance, detriment, or a clear causal link between the statement and voter suppression made it constitutionally overbroad. Under strict scrutiny, the state must prove that the law is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest, and the panel found that Minnesota had not done so.
A central part of the ruling concerns the standing of the Minnesota Voters Alliance, a group that has long opposed the state’s felon-voting laws and has worked to narrow their application. The alliance maintains that under Minnesota law, people should be allowed to vote only when they are no longer subject to any rights-restrictions from the state, which would mean that individuals on supervised release would not be eligible to vote. The state’s current election rules allow people to vote unless they are currently incarcerated, a more expansive franchise that the alliance believes is contrary to law. Because the group’s public advocacy about felon voting often occurs in the weeks before elections, its members feared that their statements about who is eligible to vote could be construed as false and subject them to prosecution under the state’s disinformation statute. Two years ago, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected the group’s state court challenge to the underlying law, finding that the group did not have a sufficient injury to sue. But the Eighth Circuit said the federal case was a different realm. The group’s concern that its public advocacy could expose it to criminal liability was enough to give it standing to bring a First Amendment challenge in federal court. The court explained that a credible threat of prosecution, especially in a statute that carries criminal penalties, creates a real and immediate chill on expression, and the group did not need to wait until charges were filed to challenge the law.
The procedural history of the case shows how sharply the Eighth Circuit diverged from the lower court. The Minnesota Voters Alliance sued to enjoin the state’s disinformation statute, naming Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as the defendant. Anoka County, a suburban county north of the Twin Cities, intervened in the case, seeking damages against the alliance and an injunction against its comments. The district court dismissed the alliance’s claims, but the appeals court reversed, ordering the lower court to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the state from enforcing the law against the alliance and its members. The panel was particularly troubled by the law’s potential for prior restraint, which the Supreme Court has long viewed as the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. Stras said the speech restriction had “several problematic features” because of the importance of speaking before elections take place. “Nothing prevents a government official from getting an injunction and then sitting back until the election is over and the speech no longer matters,” he wrote. “After all, the fuse under the statute is particularly short: it covers speech made ‘within 60 days of an election,’ which is a short enough time frame that any preliminary determination supporting a prior restraint effectively becomes final.” That observation underscores the practical reality that election speech is time-sensitive; if a court silences a speaker during the weeks before voters go to the polls, the harm cannot be undone even if the speech is ultimately found protected. The Eighth Circuit’s decision thus not only protects the alliance’s current advocacy but also establishes a important precedent for why preliminary injunctions against political speech in the election period face a heavy presumption of unconstitutionality.
The ruling arrives at a politically charged moment, as states across the country wrestle with how to respond to false election information, and it may have ripple effects beyond Minnesota. Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office issued a statement saying it was reviewing the ruling and considering its options. That leaves open the possibility of an appeal to the full Eighth Circuit or a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Minnesota Voters Alliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Anoka County, which intervened in the case, was left without a clear path forward; the county had sought to hold the alliance liable for its allegedly false statements, but the Eighth Circuit’s ruling makes clear that the type of knowing misstatements the alliance may have made—without a showing of actual harm to a voter—cannot form the basis of a criminal prosecution under this statute. The decision also reflects a broader judicial skepticism toward state statutes that criminalize false election speech. Many such laws have been challenged in recent years, and courts have often struck them down as overbroad or vague, or limited them to instances of fraud with concrete victims. The Eighth Circuit’s reliance on the stolen valor case suggests that any future law targeting election misinformation must be far more precise, perhaps requiring proof that the speaker intended to change the outcome of an election or that a specific voter was actually prevented from casting a ballot. Without those requirements, the court reasoned, the statute operates not as an anti-fraud measure but as a speech code, and that is not something the First Amendment permits.
The case is Minnesota Voters All. v. Ellison, 8th Cir., No. 24-03094, and the decision was dated August 20, 2026. Judges Raymond W. Gruender and Jonathan A. Kobes joined Stras’s opinion, making it a unanimous panel decision. The Minnesota Voters Alliance is represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center, the Liberty Justice Center, and Nicholas James Nelson of Wayzata, Minnesota. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office represents Ellison, while Anoka County is self-represented. The practical effect of the ruling is that the Minnesota Voters Alliance can continue to make statements about felon voting rights in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections without fear of prosecution under the challenged statute. The group’s broader legal battle over the meaning of Minnesota’s election laws remains unresolved, and the underlying dispute about who should be allowed to vote—people currently incarcerated versus all people no longer under state rights-restrictions—continues to be a contentious issue in state politics. But for now, the Eighth Circuit has sent a clear message: the government cannot use the criminal law to silence political advocacy based on contested interpretations of election law, nor can it punish false statements without proving the kind of real-world harm that distinguishes fraud from protected speech. The ruling is a reminder that in the American constitutional order, the First Amendment leaves little room for the state to act as the arbiter of truth in election debates. Even when the speech is false, the burden is on the government to show why the lie matters, who was hurt, and why a more targeted law could not accomplish the state’s goals. In this case, Minnesota fell short of that burden, and the court allowed the speech to proceed.